


romeo by the window

by odoridango



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Coffee Can Telephone, M/M, Neighbors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-23
Updated: 2013-11-23
Packaged: 2018-01-02 09:50:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1055355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/odoridango/pseuds/odoridango
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Modern AU. Some people write love letters. Other people throw coffee cans.</p>
            </blockquote>





	romeo by the window

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by this gorgeous pic by fridaynightxylene on tumblr: http://fridaynightxylene.tumblr.com/post/67158362853/you-got-a-smile-that-could-light-up-the-whole

It starts because Eren doesn’t know well enough to leave things alone, and because he has a book on his rickety, secondhand dining table to return. So as soon as he sees that tawny undercut bob into view from across the street, he scrambles to his window, unlatching it and opening it, wincing at the unearthly screech.

The coffee can he launches at the window makes a satisfying loud clanking noise, and he smiles sheepishly when the boy looks over with an indignant look on his face, waving a little, mimes opening the window. When Undercut just frowns and turns away, Eren reels the coffee can back in, throws it harder the second time.

“ _Hey! I need to talk to you!”_ he yells across the gap between their apartment buildings, just in case Undercut doesn’t notice. But he does, and he stomps over from his kitchen table, a neat looking white one completely the opposite of Eren’s, and slams the window open.

“Holy fucking shit, Jaeger, could you not,” he hisses, voice barely audible over the space between them.

“Then use the coffee can!” Eren shouts again, throwing the can a third time. He chuckles when Undercut fumbles with it a little bit, raises his side of the makeshift telephone to his mouth. “And how do you know my name?” he asks.

“Because you’re an obnoxious little shit, that’s why,” Undercut grumbles, glaring, “I was in Texts and Foundations with you last year. Anyone from that class would know you, seeing as you never shut your goddamn face. Seriously, what are you, five? Who the hell talks with coffee cans and string at this age?”

“Shut the fuck up, coffee cans are awesome and you can make hobo bread in them, okay?” Eren huffs, rolling his eyes. “And I can’t help that I actually have opinions, unlike half of the people in that class. In any case, you’re Jean right? ‘m friends with Armin, and he told me to give this back to you.” He lifts the LSAT practice book next to his head, shakes it a little. “He says you left it behind in the library during group work.”

Hazel eyes widen, and Jean puts down the coffee can for a moment to retreat into his apartment. He comes back with a ratty looking backpack in tow, covered in metal buttons, combing through a mass of stray papers and notebooks. Picking up the coffee can, he sighs as he runs his hand through his hair, holding the dirty blonde strands away from an aristocratic forehead. “Damn. I really did leave it behind, didn’t I?” The words are mildly contrite. “Look, do you mind meeting me downstairs? I kind of need that.”

Eren snorts in good humor. “Don’t see why you would, not at all.”

Up close, Jean’s got legs that go on for miles, and a face that vaguely reminds Eren of horses because of the length, but he’s got a solid jaw and nice cheekbones. Broad shoulders too, trim waist, and thin lips.

“Your name is Jean, right?” Eren queries again, handing over the book, other hand tucked into the pocket of his green hoodie.

“Yeah,” Jean replies, eying him a little distrustfully. “Jean Kirschtein. You said you were Armin’s friend?”

“Childhood friend, actually,” Eren admits, rocking back on his heels a little. “Always had his nose buried in a book back then, too. You must be doing pre-law with each other, huh?” A finger taps the worn cover of the LSAT book.

“We’re in the same subgroup for Law and Ethics core this semester,” Jean murmurs, but he’s eyeing Eren a little strangely, head cocked to the side slightly, eyes focused intensely on his face, until his mouth slides into a rakish, slightly lopsided grin. “You know what, Jaeger, you don’t seem to be nearly as much of an asshole as I thought you were.”

“Hey!” Eren protests, “What the hell does that mean?”

“It means,” Jean says, “The next time you want to talk to me, you should try something other than coffee cans, because some of us actually have grown out of being toddlers.”

Jean’s toes become intimately acquainted with Eren’s heel, and it’s the start to a glorious series of months where the world seems determined to shove him at Eren Jaeger in amazingly varied ways. They bump into each other at the coffee shop, meet going in and out of Armin’s apartment, trade scowls across the quad, take turns standing behind each other at the local supermarket, and at one point, Jean even ends up with one of Eren’s used textbooks. Of course, they’re tentative neighbors, too, and though neither is aware of it, Jean and Eren-watching have become their respective favorite sports. Jean studies a lot, which makes sense because he’s in the pre-law program, and on days when he’s at home he doesn’t bother to dress up, slouches around in loose grey sweatpants and a blue tee that looks soft from repeated washing. There are other things too: Jean wears glasses, Jean can cook, Jean prefers pencils to pen, and Jean likes scotch eggs for breakfast and makes one for himself every Sunday. A pack rat, his apartment is filled with clutter, odds and ends that say an incredible amount about him—the rack of recipes sent by his worrywart mother, a calendar marked with all sorts of notes in green, red and blue pen, the cheap, broken ukulele and the place of honor it has on the bookshelf. He’s incredibly expressive with his body, moving with a stretch of his long limbs, and speaking with his hands. When distracted, he sings, and Eren stops what he’s doing to listen, closes his eyes and tries to subdue the well of feeling in him, vast and sudden, that rises with each swell of Jean’s voice.

What he doesn’t know is that Jean sometimes catches him singing along with him, absent mindedly mouthing the words in his ramshackle dining room. Eren’s room is a little quirky, a little crooked, with mismatches plates and utensils and furniture, the décor consisting of pictures and posters and computer print-outs of articles and art plastered hodge-podge over the cream colored walls. He’s not messy, but he’s not neat either, tosses things to the side one day and comes back to tidy up the next. Whether it’s twirling a pencil between tan fingers, drumming a beat against the tabletop, or simply shifting around, Eren’s a study of motion and focus. Sometimes he spends hours absorbed in a text, in an assignment, and other days he just prowls through the halls of his apartment, restless. He blinks, and his eyes are the greenest things that Jean has ever seen, and sometimes Jean thinks of the Great Gatsby when he looks at them, that green light of desire, the green that gleams at him from across the way when Eren smirks or grins over the dry erase board with his big blocky handwriting over it.

Sometimes Jean pauses to think of how cliché it is, people in neighboring apartment buildings, communicating each other by writing things on dry erase boards. Eren is the one who starts that too, chucks the coffee can contraption at his window again, and when Jean opens the window to yell, he’s silenced by Eren’s expectant stare and the finger that jabs at the backward words written in electric blue dry erase marker: _This is okay right?_

Jean grabs a piece of paper from the printer’s scrap pile, and writes furiously with Sharpie: _That's not your window you don't have to write backwards you dumbass._

Eren reverts to his customary scowl, wipes the board off with a sleeve, careless of the marker scum, and scribbles, _Shut up, I forgot. Are you going to movie night at Armin’s?_

Even after months of communicating this way, watching for each other’s shadows behind the curtains, dragging the lamps closer for  better reading when they scribble late into the night, watching each other laugh and grin and frown in their open windows, they never exchange numbers. They never talk again across their windows, and what they don’t say is speaking like that, coffee cans at their ears, covered in dark and enveloped in the whispers of each other’s voices, would feel too much like playing at intimacy, playing at being lovers. So Eren still catches Jean’s attention with his ridiculous coffee cans, while Jean makes his own set, and absolutely does not flush in triumph at Eren’s startled grin when he hears the sound of metal on glass for the first time. His laugh is light and boyish, full bodied, and Jean hears the brightest parts of it carried over the wind.

There are ten markers, all lined up in a row, on Jean's windowsill. All of them are green.

Armin tells him that he’s managed to get Eren an invite to the law department’s spring formal, and Jean has to squash down the anticipation and eagerness with a frown and scowl, though his blush and blustering gives him away. _I’ll go if you go_ , the board propped against Eren’s window reads, and Jean responds with a _Gosh, you’re so needy_ , but they know what he means, they know what it is that Jean won’t say. And in the days after that, there’s an extra curl to the corners of Eren’s mouth, and his eyes are greener than ever. _Can you even dance?_ Jean needles him, but Eren sticks his tongue out, blows a raspberry. _Better than you!_

But college work slows down for no student, as both of them well know, and Jean’s professors decide to jumpstart midterms. He’s piled with reports, essays, tests, and there’s still the LSAT to worry about in three weeks’ time. So when he sees Eren approach the window, he swallows the lump in his throat, regrets and yearns. In a fitted white shirt, that outlines the breadth of his shoulders and the tapering lines of his wrist, a black tie snuggled comfortably close to his collar, and a sleek black vest that displays the bend of his waist, Eren looks like a dream, and when he looks up with a smile, flushed and eager, the happiness slides straight off his face and he writes: _You going tonight?_

And Jean, in his thick glasses and ratty old blue shirt, offers Eren a melancholy smile and a curt answer: _No. Studying._

Eren scowls, and storms off. Jean stares after him for a moment, wonders if he’ll come back, wonders if Eren was looking forward to it as much as he was. He thinks about what it would have been like to talk to him again, maybe to slip an arm around his shoulders, or sit close enough that their hands would brush, but in the end, he just flicks the blinds closed with a heavy sigh. He doesn’t want to see Eren. Doesn’t want to see that disappointed face.

His apartment bell rings and his heart leaps into his throat. He stumbles over scattered clothing and piles of textbooks and homework to find Eren at the door, hastily changed into a yellow shirt with its neckline askew, brown hair windblown, his schoolbag slung over his shoulder.

“Why didn’t you tell me earlier?!” he demands, and his strident voice is loud in the quiet of Jean’s apartment, piercing, because Jean never hears Eren’s voice alone when they’re together and it knocks something loose in him, makes him take the jump to raise a shaking hand and trace the line of Eren’s cheek gently.

“I have so much work,” Jean murmurs, stroking the line of Eren’s collarbone, warm under his hands. “And you were looking forward to it so badly…”

And Eren scowls at him, truly angry, and flings himself at Jean’s chest like a sledgehammer, arms winding tight around his ribs. “With you, you fucking dork! I wanted to go with you. Like I give a fuck about your stupid spring formal, I’m not even your department.” He thumps Jean’s lower back in frustration.

Speechless, Jean leans his cheek on a warm, fluffy mass of brown hair, wraps his arms tentatively around thick shoulders. Eren’s hair smells like nothing in particular, just musk and scent. He likes it. He closes his eyes, turns his head so that his lips press against the strands, and Eren hums, clutches him closer, a line of heat against Jean’s front.

“You should ask me for my number,” Eren grumbles, nuzzling into his touch.

“If you ask me for mine,” Jean replies, and brushes a quiet kiss, a proper one, across Eren’s lips.

 

 


End file.
